


Crysalis

by devera



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Video & Computer Games, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devera/pseuds/devera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something wrong about Desmond</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crysalis

**Author's Note:**

> Post ACR speculations so spoilers for the end of the game. Read at your own risk.
> 
> Written for a prompt over at the AC kinkmeme. It's not kinky though. Or even porny.

Desmond's not the same; even a fool can see that, and Shaun's no fool. He's changed, like time in the Animus – Christ, Shaun doesn't even want to think about how long – has done something to him that no amount of Bleed Effect could. Shaun expected anger when Desmond awoke, he expected grief, confusion even, but when Desmond had opened his eyes and looked at his father and said I know what I have to do, it had set the tone for everything after it.

Someone who didn't know any better might think this new, quiet, self possessed Desmond is an improvement. Some asshole who was always complaining that Desmond did nothing but sit around while real assassins were out there getting killed might have taken it back, seeing Desmond now. But Shaun's not that asshole, not anymore. No, what Shaun is, is worried. Desmond's hardly spoken a word – let alone to Shaun – since he came out of the coma, but when Shaun tries, it's not like he gets stonewalled. That would be normal, he thinks. That would be running away, which Desmond has obviously been doing for a long time now. But instead what he gets is a faint smile and an assurance that he's ‘fine', that everything is fine. And then Desmond puts his hand on his shoulder or his arm, gives it a reassuring squeeze, and wanders away, and Shaun can only stand there and let him.

It's not good enough. Desmond has to be feeling something. No one who's gone through what he's gone through wouldn't be feeling something, and Shaun will be damned if he's going to sit by and let the guy self destruct again. Desmond had been suffering Bleed Effect – badly – before they'd gone for the artefact, and no one had listened to him. Lucy had paid the price for that, and Shaun isn't going to let that happen again, not to Desmond and not to anyone else.

But with Desmond not talking, Shaun doesn't have a lot of avenues. Bill won't do anything – this is what he's wanted from the start. He's going to have to go straight to the source, so to speak, except...

"There's nothing there, Shaun. I'm telling you." Rebecca sounds like she looks, worn down to her raw components. "It's all gone."

Shaun frowns and gestures at the idle machine. Bec's been working on it since Desmond woke up and he's not sure she's slept a whole lot in that time.

"It's operating isn't it? So there must be an environment."

"It's not that simple!" she snaps, but Shaun is not backing down from this one.

"Just give me what you have, I don't care. I'm not having a repeat of before."

Rebecca freezes at that and, if possible, goes even paler. "You think it will?" Her eyes search his face, like he has all the answers. He wishes he did.

"I think it's a possibility," he tells her grimly, looking around the empty store room they're discussing this in, away from Bill, certainly away from Desmond.

"All right, Shaun," Rebecca sighs, her posture slumping a little. "All right. I'll send what I have to you when I get back to the machine." She doesn't call it ‘baby' anymore. She hasn't called it baby since Lucy died.

"Thanks," Shaun says, and then as Rebecca makes to leave, his conscience twinges and he reaches out and clasps her shoulder, stopping her on her way past him. "It'll be okay, Becca."

It's the best he can do under the circumstances, and she gives him a smile that says she doesn't believe him but she's grateful he's trying.

"Yeah, Shaun," she agrees. "Of course it will."

Shaun watches her leave, and wonders how it is if the Assassins have everything they want now, does it feel like they have nothing at all.

+++++

Shaun works late into the night, and then the next night, then the night after that. Rebecca was more or less right about the Animus data. It's not all gone, but it's not exactly making sense either. Shaun stares at it until his eyes cross, until he's dreaming in binary and arrays and clusters during the few hours he does sleep, until he's throwing down cup after cup of coffee and wondering if this is the state of the Animus, how in all that's holy is Desmond still walking around stringing coherent sentences together.

"Fuck," he says to himself, and it's two am and he's pretty much on the verge of giving up. "This is bloody hopeless."

"What is?"

Shaun jumps about a mile out of his seat before his brain can register that it's Desmond behind him.

"You're working pretty hard there, Shaun," Desmond says, coming over to stand by his chair. "What are you doing?" But Shaun's pretty sure he's already seen what Shaun's doing.

"What does it look like, you twat?" Shaun demands, without his usual vitriol. Desmond hasn't been biting at what Shaun's casting these days anyway.

"It looks like you're looking at the Animus," Desmond says. "Looking for something we don't already have?"

It sounds like Desmond is saying Shaun is wasting his time, like he believes they have everything they need and that's it, Shaun's right there, finally, at the end of his rope. All this time, losing Lucy, thinking Desmond was never going to wake up, or if he did, be little better than a vegetable, watching Bill worry not about his son but about whether his son finally had the answers the Assassins have been after for so many generations. Sure, of course Shaun understands it all on an intellectual level, about sacrifices and the greater good and all that shite, but there's a personal factor here and he's not going to be the one who forgets that, not after everything they've been through.

He surges out of his chair, and Desmond takes a step back, not surprised so much as just making room. But Shaun never was one about distance when it came to venting, so he grabs Desmond's shirt and he half expects some effortless countermove that breaks his grip first and his wrist second. Desmond just stands there instead, staring at him calmly, waiting. It just makes him angrier. The old Desmond would have been giving Shaun a sarcastic serving by now. The old Desmond would push back, challenging Shaun to step up, and when he did, would grin like fighting with Shaun was more fun than he could have in three lifetimes, let alone one. Shaun would be a hypocrite if he said he didn't on some level miss that, but that's not really what this is all about and he's going to make Desmond understand or die trying.

"I'm looking for you, Desmond! You! You're not the same anymore! You left something in there and we want it back. I want it back. We've all paid enough and I'm over it. I don't give a shit what we gained. I don't give a shit if this is to save the world because we've lost enough and even if you don't see it anymore, I still do. So just sod off and let me do what I need to do, all right?"

He shoves Desmond away, turns back to his terminal and drops himself angrily back into his chair. But Desmond doesn't leave. Instead, he just steps back into Shaun's peripheral, turning and propping himself on the table edge next to him while Shaun does his best to ignore him.

"It's not just Lucy," Desmond says after a while, softly, almost like he's talking to himself. Shaun freezes anyway, can't even draw breath because Desmond's not even said her name since he woke up. "Clay's gone too."

Shaun does breathe then. "Clay?" He can't help but look at Desmond then, who's not looking back, but is instead staring at his feet with more expression on his face than Shaun's seen in a week.

"Otherwise known as Subject Sixteen," Desmond sighs. "He was in there. With me. He saved me."

"He..." Shaun starts. It's not possible, surely.

"The environment was crumbling," Desmond says with a shrug. "And he'd been saying for so long that he wanted to get out, that he needed to get out, and I really thought he was going to do it for a second there."

Shaun stares at him, and the idea that is forming in his head is horrifying, that Subject 16 had been trying to come out, with Desmond, in Desmond. Shaun can't even begin to guess at what that would have done to Desmond's already stressed psyche. Or whether he would have been Desmond at all.

"But in the end," Desmond says, his voice roughening, and Shaun sees something he finally recognises in Desmond's expression – regret, grief, lonliness. "He pushed me through alone. He sacrificed the last of what he was," he nods towards the code scrolling down Shaun's screen, then straight at Shaun, "just to save me. You're right, Shaun. There's been too many sacrifices, too much lost. I can't let any of them be in vain. I can't. Lucy would have- She would have wanted me to keep going. The Desmond you're looking for, he wasn't the guy that could do that. But I am."

Suddenly he's pushing himself off the desk, walking away. Shaun fumbles up out of his chair, turns, maybe to give chase, but all he can do is stand there and stare after him, his mouth open and no words coming out, because the way Desmond looks as he disappears is like there is the weight of a world on his shoulders, and Shaun suddenly realises he's seen it before.

In Syria, and then again in Italy.

In the Animus.

But something's different, something's changed.

Desmond looks like the weight of the world is on his shoulders and finally, finally, he is strong enough to bear it.


End file.
